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September 11, 2011

I ♥ Community Forklift!

This weekend's guest bathroom work involved a trip to Community Forklift, an amazing local store that sells donated surplus building materials and architectural salvage in support of environmentally friendly construction and home renovation. We had a few things that we were looking for, but we also took the opportunity to donate a few light fixtures that have been kicking around our garage for the past couple of years. One man's trash is another man's treasure, and all that.

The store has a huge outside lot full of cast iron bathtubs, sinks, marble slabs, fencing materials, and tons of other large-scale stuff. When we were first designing the guest bathroom, we thought that we'd reuse our old sink countertop with a new base - turns out that taking that route would be way more expensive than replacing it. I'd searched a bit online for pedestal sinks, but we thought we'd check out what Community Forklift had to offer. Here's the sight that greeted us.

Lots o' sinks! There were a few pedestal types that looked pretty good from afar, but up close were chipped and stained. I wasn't sure if chipped and stained = farmhouse chic or just pain dirty... Anyway, we decided to see what else they had in the way of plumbing inside. Here's Ryan looking thrilled in one of their sink/toilet aisles.

We found one pedestal sink in great condition that we liked for $125. The price was definitely right, but we weren't sure that the design was exactly what we were looking for, so it was a no go.

Next up, doors. We've been playing with the idea of putting French doors between the upstairs hallway and future office. That way, we can close off the room and the cats won't rub their furry little faces on the computer camera while Ryan is in the middle of Skype calls with business clients...

Community Forklift has rows and rows of doors, which can be kind of overwhelming. Since we'll be building the wall to accommodate the doors, we didn't require exact measurements, but we knew that we were aiming for somewhere around five feet for the pair. After some serious digging around in the French door aisle, we came up with a set in good condition, exactly five feet wide. They're different heights, but only because there's a 2X4 stuck to the bottom of one. How this pair worked together when one door was several inches taller than the other, I'm not sure.

Now, let me start this off by saying that we are not those people that have good luck wherever we go, but I believe these doors were meant to come home with us! Each door was originally priced at $35 - and I feel like that would have been a great deal. A set of French doors for $70 when they normally cost $300+ at the chain stores? Yes, please. Well, this weekend, Community Forklift was selling all doors priced at less than $50 at an amazing 75% off! We scored these babies for seventeen dollars and fifty cents! Add a couple of pieces of door hardware to our lot, and the grand total was $20.50.